4 Children Stabbed to Death in Southern China

BEIJING — A man in southern China stabbed to death four children on their way to school on Friday, state media reported.

The attack, in rural Lingshan County in the southwestern province of Guangxi, happened shortly after 6 a.m. as the children were walking to the Gupu primary school in Pingshan township, the official Xinhua news agency reported. It was the latest in a series of knife or ax attacks on schoolchildren that have alarmed parents in China and prompted national soul-searching about the causes of the violence.

The Beijing News, citing witnesses, said the suspect, Shi Jianping, 56, was driving a motorized pedicab as he chased down the children with a fruit knife. One child was killed near the school gate and two more nearby, while an 8-year-old boy later died at a hospital. The body of one of the victims was found decapitated in the back of the man’s pedicab, which had been abandoned about four miles away.

The police were searching for the suspect.

Earlier this month, a man upset that he could not enroll his children in school stabbed eight students and a teacher, killing three people, at a primary school in the eastern province of Hubei.

Also on Friday, six children died and 22 were wounded in a stampede at a primary school in the southwestern city of Kunming, according to state media. One report said a group of children startled by the crash of falling cotton mats spread panic through the school as they ran screaming from the building.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: China: Stabbings and a Stampede Leave 10 Schoolchildren Dead. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe